


Large Mocha, Baked Good

by raindrop13



Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: Coffeeshop AU, F/M, no powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 17:14:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13617951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raindrop13/pseuds/raindrop13
Summary: Lorna didn’t even like coffee. But John had volunteered with her refugee non-profit for six months – doing the heavy lifting at resettlements, staying after hours to help with paper work – and he was so proud to co-own this coffee shop downtown. He’d been talking about it since April, when he and his friend Marcos got the lease. Buying a cup of coffee and a baked good was the least she could do.





	Large Mocha, Baked Good

Lorna didn’t even like coffee. But John had volunteered with her refugee non-profit for six months – doing the heavy lifting at resettlements, staying after hours to help with paper work – and he was so proud to co-own this coffee shop downtown. He’d been talking about it since April, when he and his friend Marcos got the lease. Buying a cup of coffee and a baked good was the least she could do.  
She didn’t go on opening day. She didn’t like crowds, and she figured it would be so busy John wouldn’t notice her anyway, and the effort would be wasted. So she went the day after, a Sunday; she walked down the busy side street, past a yoga studio and a Tex Mex place, into the streamer-laden Underground Café. The banner in the window still said “Grand Opening” and the brightly colored balloons crashed with the otherwise neutral color scheme, but in a way Lorna found endearing, not grating. And John was behind the cash register, so she didn’t waste the trip.  
His eyes lit up when he spotted her, and she was happy to wait in line – happy there was a line, happy the café had customers dotting their couches and tables. “Hey, this place is super cool. You did a great job.”  
“Thanks! What are you drinking, it’s on me.”  
Lorna laughed and shook her head, her artificially emerald hair falling from her messy bun. “Dude, that’s a terrible business model. I’m getting a large mocha and I’m paying for it. And one of whatever pastry you think I’ll like.”  
She could tell he was going to protest, his smile poised to make some witty response that ended with her getting coffee on the house, so she gestured to the other man behind the counter. “Is this your partner? Marcos? Hey, Marcos, your buddy is trying to give away your food.”  
Marcos turned away from the opposite counter, from the whirring and intimidating machine he was handling, to enter the fray. Marcos, Lorna realized now that her attention wasn’t trained on her best volunteer, was stunningly, unbelievably, painfully beautiful. “I don’t know who this is, John, but she looks like you better do what she says.” His smile was friendly and a little bit shy, and Lorna decided she could see that smile every second for the rest of her life and not get tired of it.  
John rolled his eyes. “This is Lorna. I’ve told you about Lorna. She runs the refugee resettlement group.”  
Recognition lit Marcos’ face, and when his gaze fell back to Lorna it lingered. “When I pictured you, your hair wasn’t green.”  
Lorna smirked. “Until last week, it wasn’t. It used to be burgundy.” Lorna furnished a ten-dollar bill from her pocket, directed it towards John. “Also, you’re going to keep the change. And if you argue, I will remind you that you’ve given me a hundred hours of unpaid labor. You will accept this tip.”  
Taking the bill from her dramatically, John fake-glared at the register. “When she’s dramatic, you do what you want. When she starts talking like a contract lawyer, you do what she says,” he said, ostensibly to Marcos, although directed at Lorna.  
“Excuse me. What is that supposed to mean?”  
“It means that when you really mean business, you talk like a Victorian.”  
Lorna turned to Marcos to share her faux outrage, and realized that Marcos was still there, watching her. He could have returned to the coffee, she reasoned. There were customers waiting. Shaking the thought off, clearing her throat, she borrowed John’s trick of using Marcos as a middle man. “I hope you didn’t let John do any of the contracts for this place, because he clearly has no idea how contracts are supposed to sound. Or Victorians, by the way.”  
John made a big show of depositing the change in the tip jar. “Your mocha will be ready shortly.”

Lorna had said that John could restructure his hours, or take a sabbatical – he was a volunteer, he wasn’t technically obligated to continue at all. His previous job, as a personal trainer, offered flexibility that being a business owner didn’t. She understood.  
But he was still there, Thursday night, helping. Lorna was technically the only paid staff at the Atlanta branch of her organization – the Polaris branch – and she was quietly relieved John had stayed on. Her work week frequently stretched beyond her 40 paid hours – with programming, fundraising, and actual refugee resettlement – and John was the only volunteer who had stayed long enough to be trained, who could actually help knock some of her unpaid overtime off. As they sat poring over the latest relevant legislation – a proposed bill to restrict resettlement, a city ordinance regarding welfare – John fidgeted with his highlighter. “So, what did you think of the café?”  
Lorna smiled, glanced up from her own dense document, and met his gaze. “It was amazing. Honestly. I’ll definitely come by again this Saturday.”  
John’s smile was proud, she could tell, but a little something else as well, something she couldn’t identify. “Great.” And then he started talking about Marcos.  
Lorna’s smile faltered as he went on, although she tried to focus on being happy for her friend. Because it became increasingly clear to her, as he talked, that Marcos was not just John’s business partner – they were partners, romantically, together. On top of everything else, she was hurt that John hadn’t told her this explicitly before – had he thought she would judge him?  
They didn’t finish the documents. Lorna resolved to complete them over the weekend, because she was completely booked Friday, planning a fundraising event. Maybe she could do it at the coffee shop, to distract her from the pathetic crush she’d been nursing on a man who was apparently not only taken, but noticeably taken by her friend, the only reason they’d even been introduced. God, it was like something in high school. But worse, because she should have known better, she should have noticed it.  
The only upside to working a job that should take three people is that the work goes by very, very quickly, because you don’t have time to notice the time. Normally, she was glad when the weekends seemed to come close together, when Monday through Friday sped by in a blur. But Saturday morning, as she stared at herself in the mirror, she felt more dread than relief. She couldn’t stand the thought of spending an hour in the Underground Café. Even if their baked goods were delicious.  
At least she finally liked her hair. 

When she walked in today, they had switched places – John was busy tending to loud machines, and Marcos was standing behind the register, doing something with a clipboard. But when the little bell above the door rang, he looked up, and genuinely smiled when he saw her. John turned around and waved, nearly burning himself on the steaming coffee he was pouring, before returning his attention to not ending up in the ER.  
It was stupid, she knew, petty, to mope about a crush on a guy she barely knew, especially when she valued John so much, as a volunteer and as a friend. But damn – Marcos was just as heart-stopping handsome as she remembered. She hoped the smile she returned looked genuine, until it could be, until she could actually be happy to see him under these revised circumstances.  
“Hey. Large mocha and your best pastry again, please!” She was privately impressed by how cheerful her voice was. Should she have gone into acting? It probably paid better. “And you know better than to fight me on the tip, unlike some people.” John risked turning again long enough to make eye contact and stick his tongue out like a five-year-old.  
Marcos rang her up, obediently dropping the change in the tip jar without repeating his boyfriend’s nonsense. As she walked to the other end of the counter, pretending to look at her phone, she watched him lean into John to whisper something. Mentally, she kicked herself again for being oblivious.  
“Which pastry did you want, again?” Marcos asked, leaning over the counter to get her attention, as if he didn’t already have it.  
“The best one. Dealer’s choice.”  
Marcos grinned. “Well, in that case, I just made these blueberry scones fresh. Secret recipe.”  
Lorna’s smile this time around really was genuine; his smile was contagious, his pride tangible, and the prospect of a freshly baked scone – secret recipe – was hard to find anything but delightful.  
Marcos made a big show of picking one – “the best one, your words” – but as he packaged it in a little box his demeanor faltered. “So – this is maybe – I was wondering. If you wanted to get dinner sometime?”  
And… oh.  
Oh.  
“Like, a date?” Lorna wasn’t sure what was happening on her face, but it clearly wasn’t great, because Marcos looked away, shifted, dropped his shoulders.  
“Yeah, but I mean – no, forget it, I shouldn’t have put you in this position, you’re a customer, you’re John’s friend.”  
Lorna couldn’t help the laugh that burst out. And she felt a little bad for the confusion on Marcos’ face, but not really, if only because she only had room to feel the happiness that was bubbling in her chest.  
“I would love to go on a date with you, Marcos. I just… I thought you and John were… together. Partners.”  
Marcos choked on air.  
John, behind him, spun around – apparently listening in – and finally burning his hand, the culmination of the inevitable. And yet, somehow, finding the strength to march over. “You thought what? Why?”  
Lorna gesticulated wildly. “You – I mean, you are partners, it’s not like it was baseless.”  
“Business partners,” Marcos sputtered.  
“Yeah, but, okay – John, this is your fault. Because you spent all of our meeting telling me how great Marcos was, and you’d never talked about him much before, so I assumed – I mean, dude, c’mon, why the hell were you telling me about his abs. That’s a boyfriend thing to do, man. A lovestruck boyfriend thing to do.”  
John, who was torn between arguing with Lorna and addressing the reddening burn on his hand, fairly growled. “I was trying to be a good friend because it was obvious that you guys had chemistry.”  
Lorna paused, absentmindedly pulling Neosporin from her bag to hand John for his burn. And then, yet again, she felt the smile widening across her face against her will, the laughter bubbling from her throat. “You were trying to set us up. And you were so bad at it I thought you were dating Marcos.”  
Marcos, to his credit, was also laughing. “Dude. What the fuck.” John’s outrage was apparently beyond words. He gestured pointedly, and yet without direction, first to Lorna and then to Marcos. “Go run your hand under cold water.”  
Lorna wanted to find something witty and brilliant to say, something to sum up the situation or apologize for making assumptions or propose a clean slate. But even if her brain had composed the words, she knew she couldn’t deliver them through the silent laughter that was shaking her body.  
Marcos fared better, running his hands through his hair and resting his elbows on the counter. “So – yes to dinner.”  
Lorna nodded. “Yes. Definitely yes.”  
Marcos smiled the shy, happy smile that Lorna had decided she loved – the smile she loved enough to maybe keep this guy around – and handed her the still-warm scone. “Are you free tonight?”


End file.
